British Columbia Destinations

Major French drawing show at Vancouver Art Gallery

Photo by: ©RMN (Musée d’Orsay)/Michèle Beliot

(Special)—The first exhibition of drawings ever to travel from the distinguished collection of the Musée d’Orsay is now on at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Entitled The Modern Woman, it brings together nearly 100 artworks by celebrated 19th century French artists, including Bonnard, Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Morisot, Pissarro, Redon, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Seurat and more.

On view until September 6, The Modern Woman explores how artists at this watershed moment in art history radically departed from tradition to capture a sense of the “modern” in their work.

With a focus on the female subject, the exhibition presents drawings that reflect the dramatic evolution of artistic practice, as well as the increasing independence of women in French society during the late 19th century.

Organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Musée d'Orsay, The Modern Woman will only be presented in Vancouver, providing a unique opportunity for North American audiences to experience rarely seen drawings, many of which have never travelled beyond Paris.

The exhibition is curated by Isabelle Julia, conservateur général du patrimoine, arts graphiques at the Musée d’Orsay, with the cooperation of exhibition commissioners Guy Cogeval, president of the Musée d’Orsay, and Thomas Padon, assistant director/director of international partnerships at the Vancouver Art Gallery. In the mid 1800s, French artists started to turn away from the formal portraits, landscapes and historical scenes that had dominated French art for centuries, and began to take inspiration from everyday experience.

The Modern Woman presents drawings that capture the spirit of Paris’ dynamic urban life in that era. Women are central in the drawings and are pictured in a variety of contexts: sitting for portraits, strolling the city streets, frequenting cafés or glimpsed in the privacy of their boudoir, seemingly unaware of the artist’s presence.

“What came together when selecting these drawings with Isabelle Julia was how intimately and vividly the artists captured the complexity of the Belle Époque and the women who inhabited it,” said Padon.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 120-page fully illustrated publication with a major essay by exhibition curator Julia.